NISSAN CREATES OCULUS RIFT EXPERIENCE TO ENTICE YOUNGER CONSUMERS

BY: AD AGE STAFF, PUBLISHED: DEC 05, 2013

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Young consumers are into technology -- but cars, not so much. So Nissan is reaching out to digital natives by bringing them into the car design process and giving them a hot new virtual reality technology to play with.

At the Tokyo Motor Show, the Japanese car company handed people virtual reality goggles designed by California startup Oculus VR. The company promises to bring the gaming world, among other things, to a whole new level by immersing audiences fully within a virtual environment via its Oculus Rift headset.

In the case of Nissan, the googles plunged participants into a virtual 3D world where they designed a concept car. Nissan is working on a theme it calls co-creation -- including consumers in the car development process -- and the VR game echoes that idea.

"We want to engage digital natives, people who would maybe not be interested in cars, or who expressed less passion for cars going forward, and co-creation allows us to engage them in a unique way, to bring them inside the process of vehicle development," said Nissan's global head of digital strategy, DeLu Jackson.

Young consumers aren't buying as many cars as older generations, though there's debate about whether it's because of economic pressures or because cars are losing some cache.

AKQA London worked with Nissan on the Oculus project, which Mr. Jackson described as "an interesting way to tell the story of what we do as a company, but also what the future looks like."

In the experience, participants start out with a chassis and build onto it by making choices about what to explore in the virtual world.

For example, in a scene featuring hot air balloons and kayaks in a river, people who gravitate toward the balloons signal a desire for comfort and elegance, while choosing kayaks signifies adventure.

The car design is adjusted based on each choice, and viewers come away with a virtual model car to explore inside and out. The game was part of Nissan's auto show kiosk showing off two concept coupes, the sporty IDx NISMO and the sleek IDx Freeflow.

The Oculus Rift headset is still in development for the mass market, but since AKQA invested in the project through Kickstarter, it was given an early prototype to play with.

AKQA was experimenting with Oculus at the same it was exploring auto show concepts for Nissan, said Andy Hood, AKQA's executive creative development director. Combining the two was natural.

"One of Nissan's messages is 'innovation that excites,' … so the pairing of the two was particularly nice," Mr. Hood said.

The technology uses no handset, just goggles, and viewers navigate the game through eye movement alone.

The whole process takes five or six minutes. One challenge was having such a short time to explain to people accustomed to screens that the virtual world exists all around them, even behind them, Mr. Hood said. Designers introduced that concept by having a hummingbird fly right up to people's faces, forcing them to move around to dodge it.

Another challenge was "learning how far to push it before it starts to become too much roller coaster," he said.

More than 1,500 people tried the game at the Tokyo show that ended Dec. 1, some queuing for 70 minutes, AKQA said.

Mr. Hood imagines many applications for Oculus beyond gaming -- for example, schoolchildren learning about the Civil War "wouldn't have to sit and talk about what it's like to be at Gettysburg, (they) could actually be at Gettysburg."

He expects to see a lot of the technology in the next 18 months. "It's one of those things like iPhone apps," he said. "Once people start to see the possibilities, I can imagine the floodgates are about to open."

http://creativity-online.com/news/nissan-is-making-cars-sexy-for-young-consumers-oculus-rift/245555

How "Minority Report" Designer Helped Create The Toy Car Of The Future

Boris Sofman, Hanns Tappeiner, and Mark Palatucci couldn't figure it out. The three were experts in robotics and artificial intelligence, with a handful of advanced graduate degrees among them. But when it came to the task of designing a simple toy car for their first product, Anki Drive, the team was at a loss. "I designed the very first cars myself, and trust me, I'm not a designer," Tappeiner admits. "They sort of looked like Mini Coopers--I'm very glad nobody has seen them."

The engineers scrapped their initial plans, bought a slew of concept car books, and began ripping through the pages prowling for inspiration. They labeled every single image on a scale of one to three, and quickly realized their top-rated concepts were all created by one person, Harald Belker, an automotive designer best known for his work in Hollywood. Just days later, the team hopped in their real-life car (surprise, surprise: a Mini Cooper) and headed south toward Los Angeles, set on convincing Belker to join their startup.

After years of effort, Anki Drive will finally go on sale this week. For $199, customers can buy a set of algorithmically controlled toy cars, which they can race against using the iPhone as a steering wheel. The team calls it the "first video game in the real world." While it may sound like nothing more than a holiday gift for kids, Anki hopes the technology it has developed to enable its miniature vehicles to operate autonomously will have larger significance for a range of industries, from driverless cars to health care. But in the near term, the success of the company will ride on its first product, Anki Drive, and more specifically on the design of its toy cars and how they resonate with customers. For that, the team turned to Belker, who made his name by designing iconic, futuristic vehicles for blockbusters like Minority Report and Tron: Legacy.

It's an extreme example of the unlikely marriage required between engineering and design. In Silicon Valley, where hacker-founded startups are the norm, too often is design DNA discounted from the equation. But Anki's cofounders were humble enough to realize that PhDs from Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute didn't make them wizards of automotive design--a smart decision in an era when engineering-centric founders feel inclined to dictate everything about their services, from the app icon to the user interface design.

To Belker, the Anki team's willingness to outsource its design was a welcome relief in a field that all too often attracts unqualified backseat drivers. "I always say that everyone with a driver's license is secretly a car designer--I get a lot of opinions very, very quickly," Belker chuckles. "In entertainment [especially], I deal with a lot of characters who know better."

After all, with $50 million in venture capital from Andreessen Horowitz and other top-tier firms, the Anki team had 50 million reasons to believe they could pull it off on their own. But Belker didn't encounter any Hollywood-size egos. "The beautiful thing was that Hanns and his guys, they have the technology [know-how], but they really trusted me in bringing my expertise to the table," he says, "and not micromanaging the design."

To begin, Belker and the Anki team got together to brainstorm ideas: automotive themes, personality traits, the benefits of spoilers and tire size, and so forth. But once they were on the same page, Belker was essentially given carte blanche because, as Tappeiner explains, there are dangers to having too many chefs in the kitchen. "We chose not to micromanage the design on purpose because I feel like design can go really wrong when you get five people [concentrating] on little features," he says. "First, we brainstormed about it--what should we be doing overall. But [when we later looked at Belker's designs] it was either yes or no. I really don't like to comment on [specific] features--it's either we take it or leave it, because at the end of the day, that probably gets us better results."

While the Gladiator-style approval process might irk some, Belker preferred it to having non-designers nitpicking over his designs. "That personally drives me nuts," he says.

The final design is one that Belker felt conveyed "forward-leaping motion" even "when the car is standing still." The tiny cars look fast, in other words. Each style was designed to give users a sense of each car's unique character, with lines and shape reflecting their strength or aggressiveness. As the design went from initial sketching to 3-D mock-ups to prototype models, the design and engineering teams became more intimately intertwined. "In robotics, hardware-software design is more significantly tied together than other products," Tappeiner says. "If the weight distribution in any of our cars changes by more than one gram, then the cars won't drive anymore, at all."

It was a novel challenge for Belker, who is not used to deferring to physics when designing in Hollywood. But Belker has always had to depend on his imagination more than anything. When I asked whether it was difficult designing tiny cars that one would never be able to fit in, Boris Sofman, Anki's CEO, laughs. "Harald is insanely creative, and he's also massive," Sofman says, adding that at six foot six, Belker has faced this issue all his life.

"I don't fit into anything I design," Belker says. "Even in the 28-foot-long Batmobile I designed, I couldn't fit."

Schreyer to oversee design in Hyundai, Kia

Based on article from KoreaTimes January 2013

Hyundai Motor Group announced Sunday that it has promoted Peter Schreyer to president of Hyundai Motor and its sister company Kia Motors to supervise the two automakers’ design sectors.

Previously, he shortly served as president of Kia Motors after being promoted to the position from vice president and chief design officer in a regular year-end reshuffle of the automotive group last year.

“The post has been newly created for him to supervise design in the two sister automakers and create a synergy effect,” an official from the group said. “He has been given a mission to come up with a long-term vision and strategies in design for the two brands and to enhance design competitiveness.”

Through the appointment, he will support the two sister automakers to develop their own design identities and pass on his expertise and experience to nurture talented car designers, the official said.

Hyundai Motor has boasted a fluidic sculpture design that is identified with the strong sidelines, the slanted, eagle-eye headlamps and the upside-down hexagonal grille applied to the majority of its vehicles such as the Sonata YF, the Grandeur HG, the Avante and the Tucson.

Meanwhile, based on the design philosophy of “the simplicity of the straight line,” Kia models have shared family looks with distinguishing grilles, applied to the K series _ the K3, K5, K7 and K9.

 The improved design competitiveness has contributed to the success of the two automakers, which sold about 7.12 million vehicles globally last year, up 8 percent from the previous year.

“We believe the design plays an important role in further enhancing the quality of our products and boosting sales. We think Schreyer’s expertise in car design will contribute to strengthen our competitiveness and help the group become a leading global brand,” the official said.

Schreyer joined the group in 2006 as design director after working at Audi for more than 25 years and become the first non-Korean president of the country’s second largest conglomerate last year.

CARS AND CLOTHES COLLIDE IN AUDI/HUFFER COLLABORATION

One of New Zealand's most popular clothing brands - Huffer - has partnered with Audi to celebrate their 15th birthday in style.

Huffer, which turned 15 this year, joined forces with Absolut last year to design its own bottle and now it's putting its special touch on premium cars, because 15 unique Audi A1s—the result of a collaboration with local fashion man and Audi ambassador Steve Dunstan—will hit Kiwi shores in January. 

Blending fashion cred with the latest tech to be found atop four wheels, the limited-edition range of three-door A1 Sport Pluses will be badged with its own Huffer identity, which Dunstan has been beavering away on for the past year.

“We think the design is contemporary, exciting and sporty, with a massive focus on the detail.” 

Dunstan set out, essentially, to create his perfect ride. He designed three exterior colour combinations (all black, red with a black roof, and white with a black roof) and incorporated racing-style bucket seats, interior fabrics in sprint cloth and black leather, a suede-covered steering wheel, handbrake and gear selector, and brushed aluminium inlays.

He says the interior combines sporty elements with textured materials, so the feel and form was a key design consideration. 

His favourite features? The suede steering wheel, twin-clutch gear box, and the MMI navigation system.

“The car‘s wireless technology allows you to simply get in and everything just syncs straight away - you can make calls and listen to music without even pushing a button.  I’ve kept my own needs front and centre, so this is truly a car that can handle a full-on lifestyle.”

No word on whether the Simon Gault Audi will be drizzled with jus and will have that 'five percent magic'.

Article from NZ Ad industry blog StopPress.co.nz

About Time: A Portable Starbucks Drive-Thru in Denver, CO

Read the article by Fast Co. here. Published on Oct 12, 2012.

 

 
The whole building is essentially lowered off a truck.